danteandvirgil's profile picture

danteandvirgil 's review for:

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
4.0

A fun book with not as much action as I would expect in a vampire book (though I rarely read vampire fiction or anything so that's not based on much!)

I enjoyed the surprising moments of the book very much. The genetic experimentation was something I'd never seen before which was great! Very interesting concept. A majority of the human characters were non-white which was great.
Shori's first symbiont, Wright, is described as this Adonis-like man but it felt meh to have the main character be pawning over this white man.
I don't have a lot to say about the book that hasn't been said elsewhere probably. What is definitely great in the book is the representations of functional polyamorous relationships between the vampires and their human symbionts (and between the symbionts themselves and between the vampires!) That is really interesting. The White Man(TM) has some trouble getting on board at first but even he can't stop from being sold to the love in these families.

I couldn't ever get over Shori being a child Ina and appearing as a 10-year-old human girl and having sexual relationships with her symbionts. That felt really uncomfortable and was basically accepted as okay very quickly.


#BLM #BHM #FebruaryBlackout